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The First Four Decades of Photography in India

Within a few years of its discovery, photography reached the shores of far-away India, which was then both commercially and politically a land of great potentialities. Between service forays, officers or the British army in India had nothing much to do in their posts and were free to indulge in hobbies of their choice British civilians too, loved the adventure arid opportunities that offered themselves in an exotic land. They flitted from post to post, changing professions often and enjoying a life of ease and indolence. The well-to-do among the Indians were either currying favour with the white man or else busy plotting for his ouster. Many had ample wealthl to indulge in new-fangled ideas and photography held for them an attraction beyond compare, because it depended upon God's bounteous sunlight in the country, and combined it with dark abracadabral domgs in the dark room.

Figure 6. Capt. E. C. Impey: Jeypoor, The Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds), 1865. Wet-collodion plate, 8½ x 10½ ins. From the book 'Delhi, Agra and Rajpootalla' (Cundall, Downes and Company, 168 New Bond Street, London, a copy of which is at the India Office Library and Records, London.)